Many women have been planning their weddings since they were little girls, even dressing Barbie and Ken in their gowns and tuxedos. A big part of the wedding includes the flowers, which Joanna Von Rhein, owner and designer of Joanna’s Floral Creations and Gifts, is ready to help a bride-to-be with the planning of that aspect of her wedding day.

Von Rhein, who has had her store at 213 N. Mill St. in Pontiac since 2007, runs a full service floral shop, ranging from not only fresh flowers for weddings, but also artificial arrangements, special occasions, funerals and school dances. The shop also delivers to the towns surrounding Pontiac and in Livingston County.

When it comes to planning for a wedding, she has a few guidelines she asks her brides-to-be to follow.

“Normally, I do my wedding consultations by appointment only. Everything we do is custom, so I really don’t have any set package rates, because prices always fluctuate with flowers,” she explained. “Usually, I try to have brides come in at least six months before their wedding, because I like to plan just one wedding per date so they can get my full attention. We do everything from bouquets, corsages and boutonnieres, all the way to ceremony flowers and flowers for the reception.”

On average, a bride-to-be will visit Von Rhein twice, and sometimes three times, to make final decisions on the flowers and designs.

“The first initial appointment would be to go over ideas. I have them show me styles they like and then I take notes and see what they like and then once I have an idea, I work through different recipes and different styles and get prices that way. I usually e-mail the bride back with pictures and prices and go from there so they can look over it and if they’re interested and want to meet again to go over everything or if they’re okay with it, then I write up the contract and have them come in and go over the contract. If they want to see a sample, I’ll make a sample bouquet so they can see what they will kind of look like. It all just depends on how much designing we’re going to be doing,” she said, adding that there is a deposit that needs to be paid at the time the contract is signed.

While Von Rhein says that all weddings are different, she still tries to take the time to find out what the bride-to-be wants for her wedding and tries to make her vision happen.

“What I like to do is meet with the bride and get some ideas, like what kind of style of wedding they’re having, if it’s going to be traditional or whatnot. It all depends on what colors they’re looking at for the wedding, because they’ll try to do everything to coordinate,” she said.

“It also depends on the season, too. For the fall, sunflowers and fall-type flowers are popular,” she added. “A lot of brides like carnations mixed in. It varies.”

Some brides really shoot for more uncommon flowers, like orchids.

“Some brides like those. There are some flowers that brides request that are hard to get, like stefanos, lily of the valley and other flowers,” she said.

But that doesn’t mean she can’t get them.

“I can pretty much get any flower that a bride asks for. For some of them, it depends on the season. For example, tulips are a spring flower, so that’s not something that would be available in the fall or late summer. Your most common flowers, like roses, hydrangeas and different fillers, like alstromeria, are available year around,” she said.

Bridal bouquet styles have varied throughout the years, but the trend now is the hand-held, wrapped and hand-tied bouquets.

“There are also cascading bouquets and arm bouquets, but the most popular are the hand-tied. It seems like for the last couple of years, the more popular is the wild-looking, rustic bouquets,” Von Rhein said.

As she stated, the wild and rustic look has come into style, and those styles have changed a lot throughout her 10 years as a florist.

“What I see that has gotten more popular again is that girls like the rustic look, like with burlap. That seems to be really popular last year and again this year, I still see the trend. Girls like just baby’s breath, like the Victorian rustic style. I see colors like mint green starting to be popular again. All the bright colors were really popular awhile ago. When I first started, lime greens and bright pinks were popular and it seems to be going back to all of the Victorian style. They’re into the light pink and light green and really natural look,” she said, adding, “It seems like brown and light pink are a really popular color combination for weddings. A lot of girls like rhinestones and sparkles and brooches and things like that incorporated in their flowers.”

Flowers can be a large part of a wedding budget, depending on how much each bride decides to incorporate it into the ceremony and reception.

“It’s really hard to give an average number (on how much brides spend on flowers for their wedding) because it depends on what the bride wants. It’s hard to throw prices out there, but I would say for a bride bouquet, the average is between $60 to $100 for just the bouquet. For the entire wedding, again it depends on everything they want. If it’s going to be a full wedding, reception and altar pieces, along with flowers for tables for the reception and people in the wedding, the average would be between $2,000 to $6,000,” she said. “Everything’s gone up in price. It’s the same with flowers. Everything adds up. It seems like a lot of brides just get the flowers for the bridesmaids, their bouquet, boutonnieres for the groom and groomsmen. If they just did that, the average would be $500 to $700, which is just for the wedding party. Again, it could be less and it could be more, depending on the flowers. That’s why we do everything custom.”

Page 3 of 4 - Von Rhein and her staff can handle weddings of any size, also.

“I’m game for anything. There’s myself and another designer, also. We’re full-service, so we’ll set up the wedding and if they need us to pin on corsages or boutonnieres, we can do all that. We can set up reception flowers or ceremony flowers,” she said.

The don’t only offer floral arrangements, either.

“We also do rent out vases and things like that, which helps brides save money. I have an arch they can rent out. We can also get aisle runners. We do pew bows and things like that as well,” she said. “I’m also more than willing to travel for a wedding. I’ll travel anywhere as long as they are willing to pay the delivery fee.”

One wedding that they traveled for was documented for a television show.

“We did a wedding that was part of TLCs “Four Weddings” that was up at Navy Pier. It was in the spring a few years ago. Our bride came in second. We were pretty excited about it,” she said.

Although fresh flowers are popular at the moment, silk or artificial arrangements are also available at her store.

“It’s not as popular as fresh. A lot of brides think they’re saving money by doing artificial, but honestly, it’s about the same. Depending on the quality of silks, there are some that look so realistic,” she said.

Von Rhein uses wholesale outlets to get the flowers that brides request, and those flowers can come from all over the world.

“The wholesalers I use can get flowers from growers all over the world. It just depends on if I have it available (out of season) from the grower. There’s certain times they’ll say it is available then at the last second, they’ll say it’s not available. I try to tell brides that I’m not going to use something that isn’t quality, so I always put that in my contract that we’ll substitute it for something similar,” she said. “South America is a big place flowers come from. Also, Costa Rica, all of the tropical countries, California and Florida. In the fall, there are some flowers that are locally grown, like gladiolas.”

One of her biggest pet peeves is when brides expect things that are nearly impossible.

“What drives me crazy is when a bride comes in with a Martha Stewart magazine or something like that and there will be bouquets from all these garden flowers that you just can’t get from a wholesaler. I do my best to get what they want, but a lot of times, I do things as similar as I can to make them happy. We do whatever we can to please our brides,” she said.

Page 4 of 4 - One thing that Von Rhein hasn’t had to deal with much is the dreaded Bridezilla.

“I haven’t had any since I’ve been here in Pontiac, but when I lived up north, I had to deal with a few. I would have to say the mothers are a little more hostile than the brides. There are a lot of picky mothers, which is okay. We know how to deal with them,” she said.

Von Rhein, who grew up in the Minooka/Joliet area and moved to Pontiac when her parents did, said she made the move because she “saw that it was a perfect town to open a flower shop.”